US envoy George Mitchell is scheduled to return for a seventh round of proximity
talks next week, as the issue of whether Israel will extend its 10-month
housing-start moratorium is fast becoming a major stumbling block on the road to
direct talks.
Israel Radio reported that Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas, at a meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Ramallah on
Wednesday, said he had assurances from US President Barack Obama that if the PA
entered the direct negotiations, Israel would not build one house on Palestinian
land.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, meanwhile, said during a
meeting with visiting Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou that while Israel
was interested in direct talks with the Palestinians, a continuation of the
settlement moratorium was both “impossible and unreasonable.”
Papandreou,
the first Greek prime minister to visit Israel since 1992, went to Ramallah and
a meeting with Abbas soon after his meeting with Lieberman, and there, according
to Israel Radio, was told that direct talks with Israel would begin only if
construction in the settlements ceased, and that Israel agreed the future
borders of a Palestinian state would be based on the June 4, 1967 lines.
State Department spokesman
P.J. Crowley seemed to reject the latter demand, saying at his daily
press conference on Wednesday that “our message to both parties is, let’s get to
direct negotiations as quickly as possible, where, in fact, we can address the
fundamental issues and the process, including borders. These are issues that we
think can only be resolved within the context of direct
negotiations...Ultimately, in order to address the concerns that we know
that both parties have – refugees, security, Jerusalem, borders – those are
going to be resolved in the direct negotiations themselves.”
An Israeli
government official said in response to Abbas’s demands that Israel wanted to
return to direct talks soon, and hoped that Abbas was “not just looking for an
excuse to avoid direct talks. Ultimately if he wants to find an excuse not to
negotiate, he can always find one.”
The official said that the direct
talks increasingly seemed like a receding horizon.
“Every time we get
close, the Palestinians create a new obstacle to prevent their resumption,” the
official said.
One diplomatic source said that it seemed highly unlikely
the US would have promised Abbas that if he entered direct talks all
construction in the settlements, and in east Jerusalem, would cease,
since the
Americans would not promise something they could not deliver.
Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a statement he made upon greeting
Papandreou,
said Israel wanted to enter direct peace negotiations “not really to
negotiate,
but to seek a conclusion of a historic peace agreement.”
Following the
meeting with Papandreou, Netanyahu’s office released a statement saying
it had
been agreed to “significantly tighten the relations in a variety of
bilateral
spheres.”
Papandreou invited Netanyahu to Greece for a reciprocal
meeting, the statement said.
Israeli-Greek ties have warmed considerably
over recent months, against the backdrop of the deterioration in
Israeli-Turkish
ties.
“Today, modern Greece and modern Israel are pillars of stability in
the Eastern Mediterranean, and I believe great partners in the quest for
peace –
the peace between us and our Palestinian neighbors and the peace in the
entire
region,” Netanyahu said when greeting Papandreou.
“So I welcome the
opportunity of your visit to explore how to do this – how to deepen the
relationship and the friendship between our two countries, and how to
strengthen
all our ties, beginning with economic ties,” he said, speaking of Greece
– long
considered one of the least friendly countries toward Israel in the EU –
in a
manner not heard in Jerusalem in years.